


A Father's Love

by Esmethewitch



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, Daddy Issues, Dark Humor, Dialogue Heavy, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Humor, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Paternity Reveal, Pryde was in on Hux's plans, Vomiting, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:35:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21999838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmethewitch/pseuds/Esmethewitch
Summary: Hux doesn't die. Allegiant General Pryde shot him over an armored vest, an action they arranged ahead of time. Though Pryde's motives for doing this are unclear.Dedicated to that one relative we all have who means well, but who has made us imagine things we can never unsee.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Allegiant General Pryde, Armitage Hux's Mother/Brendol Hux, Armitage Hux's Mother/Enric Pryde, Brendol Hux/Enric Pryde, Maratelle Hux/Brendol Hux/Enric Pryde
Comments: 20
Kudos: 40





	A Father's Love

Hux sucked in a shuddering breath of air. His ribs ached. If he cared to pull out the IV drip-lines that as good as bound his arms in place and look at the bandages hidden by the sheets, he reckoned his stomach would be one huge, purpling bruise.

His blaster-proof vest hung from the hook on the wall opposite his Medbay bunk, illuminated by the blinking red, blue, and green lights of life-support machinery. There was an enormous hole in the middle of it. Why did they keep it? It was good for nothing now. The armor had served its purpose. He was alive. 

The door panel to the ward hissed open. Allegiant General Pryde walked in, carrying a tray. Odd that the man would be doing a task normally performed by a droid. His face was unreadable, as usual. Pryde pulled down the folding table over the bed, and set the tray atop it. It contained a spoon and a quaking, transparent blue pudding of some kind. 

“Is that thing alive, and is it sentient?”, Hux asked peevishly. Yes, this was a childish thing to say, but he wasn’t the one who insisted on confining him to Medbay. He was fine. A bit tired and sore, yes, but he’d worked through worse before. Pryde clearly disagreed. An Allegiant General outranked a dead man. A dead “traitor”, though the information Hux had leaked to the Resistance ensured that those filthy rabble were right where they wanted them.

Pryde slowly blew out a sigh. “No. It has vitamins. Eat it.”

Hux tapped the thing with his spoon. It wobbled some more. He stuck a finger into the cold, wet, gloppy monstrosity. “Help, it’s got me!” He let out a hoarse chuckle. Then, he realized he was likely quite high from whatever they doped him with in here.

Pryde frowned. “What are you, six? Just eat. They told me you were deficient in, well, everything. And that you weren’t eating.”

“What are you, my father?” Pryde’s glare intensified. Then, he began to inspect Hux’s medical charts and the pattern of tiles on the floor, not dignifying this outburst with a response.

“Why are you here?”, Hux asked. “If it’s about payment for services rendered, I’m not in much shape to do anything right now.” Wait. He’d much rather blow Pryde high than sober, if it came to that. “I know we didn’t negotiate payment, but I’d rather not delay matters. So, what do you want? I can swallow...other things down too, you know.” Not his most inspired dirty talk. In fact, probably the least inspired dirty talk he’d ever uttered. Pryde had aged with a certain dignity, but he was old enough to be Hux’s father, and for that reason alone Hux found him repulsive.

Pryde looked at him as though he’d suggested that he fuck a wookie. “No! Absolutely not! Under no circumstances would I ever---”

Hux cut him off. Ugh. He should have known better to press his luck with the Imperial generation. Who insisted that the Empire needed children, and pressured those unfortunate enough to be homosexual to find a spouse of the opposite gender and churn out a couple of children. “Yes, I know. I’m a filthy little cock-sucker. And you don’t require my services. It’s fine. So, how many credits are we talking about for this?” He could do it. Brendol had left him a considerable sum. Hux had altered the will. He’d lived frugally. This was fine. He could take up moisture farming or something when there was none left. 

Something in Pryde’s expression softened. “No. It’s not that. At least if you prefer men, there’s less chance of you knocking up some poor girl. And you don’t owe me anything.”

Pryde’s face was unreadable as Huttese to Hux. He was staring at the door. 

“I don’t owe you anything? You saved my life. And helped me get rid of Ren.”

“I have...an old debt to you,” Pryde said slowly. “You never knew about it, but it’s there. This doesn’t even begin to settle it.”

Hux’s eyes widened. “What?”

Pryde sat down in the visitor’s chair, swagger stick across his lap. He sighed. “I should have told Brendol to go to hell, bandaged you up, and dragged you away. That might have been better for all of us.”

Hux’s memories were returning, unbidden. A dropped glass, blue milk spilt on the floor. Blows. Brendol’s face purpling with rage. And Pryde, just standing there impassively. 

“I don’t need your pity,” Hux hissed. “I don’t need it now, I didn’t need it then.”

“It wasn’t meant to be pity,” Pryde replied. “And I don’t know what my opinions would mean to you, coming from a coward such as myself.”

Hux started. Pryde was always  _ proud.  _ But there was no sarcasm in his tone. “A coward, sir?”

“Yes.” Pryde leaned forward. “I first left my home for Academy at the age of nine. Much too young. The official age restriction on Alsakan at the time was twelve. But I lied my way in. I don’t know who I fooled, or who looked the other way. It was hard. I resigned myself to being the slowest, the stupidest of my class. I was there three years too early. And terrified someone would find out, and I’d be sent home.” Pryde got up and filled a cup of water at the dispenser. “Want any?”

“No.” It could be poisoned.

“Suit yourself.” Pryde took a sip. “I spent every waking hour from my admittance to graduation in constant fear. Because I couldn’t be sent home. I won’t burden you with the details of why. You can probably guess.”

“And then you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, and it made you the man you are today,” Hux said. “Nothing like these soft layabouts you get nowadays.”

Pryde gave him a look that could have made a Tatooine cactus wither and die. “No. I didn’t. Everything I did since then was despite my origins, not because of them. At least the Empire had a deficit of personnel at the time. That worked in my favor. It was easier for relatively less qualified officers to get posts than it is today. But I waited, I learned, and I got qualifications. And told myself I could run again if things got bad. I had to have an escape plan.”

“But you didn’t run,” Hux murmured. “You’re still here.”

Pryde grimaced. “I was never afraid of taking command of a Star Destroyer,” he said. “I was scared of other things. I still am.”

“What other things?”, Hux asked.

“Rejection. Failure. Becoming everything I swore I’d leave behind. Coming in second place.” Pryde took another drink of water. “And I did do just that. Your mother always prefered Brendol to myself. He was higher ranking at the time, better connected, and I daresay better looking.”

Hux blanched. “Sir, I don’t think I need to…”

“Brendol was quite charming when he made an effort to be so,” Pryde continued. “Kind when he needed a reputation for generosity, polite when he needed to be seen as subservient or obliging. I hardly ever made an effort. And poor Polly never saw Brendol when he wasn’t trying to get a promotion or seduce someone, so if I were in her place, I’d have wanted him to raise my son.”

“Fascinating,” Hux ground out through clenched teeth. He was now picturing Brendol Hux, and that one picture he’d seen of his mother...kriff, this was awful. “So, you lost your love. How tragic.”

“We never had a label for it,” Pryde went on. “And your mother, she’d disappear for months, sometimes years at a time, and pop up again as though nothing had ever happened. I think she was ISB. One of the proudest women I’ve ever known. I knew about her and Brendol, and well, she knew about me and Brendol.”

The blue gelatin’s sweetness turned to bile in Hux’s mouth.He recalled one time Pryde came over, and Pryde had greeted Brendol warmly and kissed him on both cheeks. He’d gaped at this spectacle, half-hidden behind a settee, until Maratelle had sharply told him that this was a normal cultural practice on Alsakan. He’d taken her at her word. Now he doubted it.

“I assumed Maratelle knew about Polly, because she knew about me and approved of me, was in on it too,” Pryde continued like some professional torturer. “Clearly, I was wrong.”

Hux gagged around his pudding. Maratelle’s face was stretched from years of Botox, and painted like a cursed doll. Brendol Hux and Enric Pryde wore their years more clearly. He’d seen his father shirtless, in the locker room of the communal baths. It was not a pretty sight. And Brendol Hux was his  _ father.  _ When he could breathe again, he asked: “Tell me, sir, is it normal practice for two unrelated, uninvolved men to kiss each other on the cheeks when they greet each other on Alsakan?”

Pryde fixed him with his icy blue eyes. “No. It is not.”

Hux tried not to retch. Pryde and his father--Pryde and Maratelle, Pryde and Maratelle and his father, Pryde and his mother...no. This had to stop. He slapped the side of his IV bag, praying the intoxicating medication would arrive faster.

“Brendol was a proud man, too,” Pryde went on. “Despite going on about having a ‘bastard’, I think he was pleased to have a child attributed to him. Because he had this problem, where he couldn’t always---”

Hux let out a shriek. This was enough. He did not want to hear about his father’s habits in the bedroom. Though at this point, he wished that his father had been so impotent he’d never been born. 

Pryde shook his stick at him. “Health is important!”, he scolded. “Never be so arrogant that you let your ego get in the way of medical treatment. It’s not a matter of manhood, it’s a matter of safety. Now, you’re not forty yet so you have some time before you should worry, but you do know how to check your prostate, right? You get a finger and---”

Hux just whimpered. This was some fever dream. Allegiant General Pryde should not be talking about prostates. “Yes. Yes!!!” He’d actually not watched the official Medbay video, but this was fine. Anything to make Pryde stop talking. 

“Anyhow, where were we?”, Pryde mused. “Oh yes, your father and your mother.”

“I know where babies come from,” Hux growled. 

“I know you do,” Pryde said. “But yes, your mother. Fine figure of a woman, good shot with a blaster. Made the best pies. Terrible at schedules and keeping count, as it were. The dates lined up better for me and her rather than for Brendol, but like I said she liked him best, and he was too vain to get a DNA test done. And I was relieved. I let him think he’d not shot a blank.” Pryde set his cup down on the table. “In the end, my best friend’s death was on my head.”

Hux’s blood ran cold. “I killed Brendol,” he stated. “I’d do it again.” Technically it was Phasma and her pet beetle, but he’d arranged it. Pryde took his command from him. It was a necessary evil. He wasn’t going to let him take anything else.

“I know,” Pryde said softly. “But on Alsakan, anything a boy does is his father’s responsibility till he turns twenty-one. So did I.”

At this, Hux actually retched. Pryde scrambled and picked up an empty bedpan, positioning it under his face. He vomited, the horrible pudding leaving him in improbable chunks that still quivered. Brendol and Maratelle and Pryde. Pryde and Brendol. Pryde and Hux’s mother. Brendol and Hux’s mother, Brendol whinging terribly and saying something like: “Sorry, this has never happened to me before…” while the woman with blonde hair and a glassy smile from the holopic just lay there. He’d offered to suck Pryde’s cock. His shoulders shook, and his eyes watered. Pryde held him up. After an eternity, Pryde asked: “Are you done? Should I get you a glass of water?”

_ Are you quite finished?,  _ Brendol Hux asked across the chasm of years as tears streamed down young Hux’s face. His left eye was starting to swell.  _ Are you done snivelling? _

“I hope so,” Hux muttered.

“Water? I think it’s the pain meds that set this off, they can have that effect.”

“Yes,” Hux said. Things could be worse. He was alive. He’d killed his father before. He could do it again.


End file.
